Yes, What You Say On Twitter Actually Does Matter

Is there a bright line between what you say in "real life" and what you say on social media sites like Twitter? If you are a public figure, a journalist, or an employee at a corporation, do your tweets reflect on your organization or are they merely personal opinions best ignored? Is a tweet "newsworthy" or is it something you say in the privacy of your own internet?

"The fact that Erik makes such a massive deal out of a half sentence tweet like this means he has no real understanding of EA or the gaming industry’s internal command chain," Andersen writes. "Product Manager is below Senior Product Manager, which is under Director, which is under VP, which is under Senior VP, which is under a whole host of other people, which is under the GM, which is under five more people on the executive team. The fact that Forbes and Kain blow up a story about one guy in the trenches at EA when he has a one line take on the new COD trailer is just ridiculous."

Andersen suggests that I was saying much more than I was - that I was implying that EA itself was attacking Activision. Of course, I said no such thing. The "massive deal" I made was basically saying that social media tiffs are interesting in a political-circus sort of way. I never said that O'Leary speaks for the entire organization of EA - though, to be fair, the things you say publicly on social media do reflect on your organization, whether you're the CEO or anyone else on down the command chain.

Whether or not I understand the intricacies of the gaming industry corporate ladder is beside the point.

Certainly what I say on Twitter matters when it comes to my role at Forbes, and I don't expect any of my tweets to be treated as private correspondence.

Andersen also complains that I never reached out to O'Leary for comment or clarification. But do we really need to ask for clarification of a statement made on Twitter that calls Black Ops 2 "tired?" Is there some vague double meaning here that I'm missing? Did O'Leary literally mean that Call of Duty is tired and needs a rest?

Of course not.

For that matter, Andersen never reached out to me for clarification before writing his response to my piece. This in spite of the fact that he decided to call me clueless, and my blog post "embarrassing." I said no such thing of O'Leary. But I still wouldn't expect Andersen to ask me for clarification prior to his post. I said what I said in a public forum, on my blog, just as O'Leary said what he said on his public Twitter feed, and Andersen is saying in his public blog post. I don't think anyone is mincing words to the point where clarification is needed.

I also wrote recently about Markus "Notch" Persson, the developer behind Minecraft, who said in a series of tweets that EA is destroying gaming. After several bloggers wrote about those tweets, Notch tweeted: "Twitter quotes are NOT NEWS. You're better than that, and you make me feel dirty."

Notice, nobody says why quoting somebody's statement on Twitter is wrong or "not news" or embarrassing. It's just taken for granted that because a statement was made on Twitter it's somehow unimportant. But why? Why is it not newsworthy? Why is it that the creator of the hugely popular game Minecraft can make a very controversial statement on Twitter about EA and expect nobody to say anything about it? This certainly isn't the case with politics. If a candidate makes an outlandish or hostile statement on Twitter about one of her opponents, this is news.

Notch also brings up the fact that nobody asked him to clarify, "since a tweet is (by nature) very condensed and simplified information." But again, what he said was quite plain:

"EA releases an "indie bundle"? That's not how that works, EA. Stop attempting to ruin everything, you bunch of cynical bastards."

You can say "you bunch of cynical bastards" many ways, but it's almost always "condensed and simplified." And it almost always is going to mean the same thing (unless we're discussing actual bastards who just also happen to be cynical.)

Here's the thing, if you say something in a public forum like Twitter, you aren't granted immunity from public scrutiny just because it's Twitter.

There is nothing magical about writing in 140 characters or less that shields you from your own words. If I say something stupid or controversial on Twitter or if I write something on a blog or if I shout it in the town square it makes no difference. I'm doing it in public and I can't complain when people respond. I can argue with what they have to say, but not the fact that they said it. (See, this is what I'm doing right now.)

Communication isn't just about speaking to one another in person. It's not bound to real life interactions. Meaning doesn't evaporate when pixels are involved.

Whether we're writing on social media, a blog, or in a New York Times Op/Ed column, our words are all out there because we opened our mouths or typed on our keyboards. We own them only so far as we must own up to speaking them; beyond that, they're free game.

Perhaps the lesson here is this: before saying something controversial on Twitter, that might require clarification or that might reflect poorly on your organization, remember that although you are on the internet, your words still matter. You are responsible for them.

I'm not out to distort what you said, either, or call you names like "clueless." In the age of social media, your public opinions and public tweets are every bit as newsworthy as the things you might say in an interview, at a conference, or on television. Maybe what I end up saying about them will be wrong-headed or ultimately trivial, and that's my bad.

But if Twitter truly is just a place for bad puns, pithy commentary, and haikus, then use it that way. Personally, I think Twitter is much more than that - a form of communication that has helped spark revolution in some parts of the world, and that can be used to find out all sorts of things about the world, or have lengthy, if disjointed, conversations about important issues. Social media is a tool, for good or ill.

How you use that tool is up to you. My words are scrutinized all the time, and I've said plenty of stupid things in the past. None of them were anyone's fault but my own.

(P.S. This whole thing makes me think of the picture-within-a-picture. It's "ridiculous" that I write about a tweet, but not ridiculous to write about me writing about a tweet...and now here I am writing about Andersen writing about me writing about a tweet...)